This is a major developing story. The outage is tied to a massive global cybersecurity incident involving Instructure, the parent company of Canvas.
​On Thursday, May 7, 2026, the Canvas LMS was hit by a coordinated cyberattack that knocked the platform offline for roughly 9,000 institutions worldwide, including major universities like Harvard, Stanford, Duke, and the University of Sydney.
The hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility. They didn’t just take the site down; they managed to post ransom messages directly onto student and teacher dashboards before the platform was forced into “maintenance mode” to contain the breach.
As of today, May 9, service has been restored for most users, though some specific tools (like Canvas Beta and Test environments) may still be under maintenance.
Many universities have extended deadlines or shifted to alternative methods of course delivery because the outage occurred during the critical final exam season.
The hackers claim to have accessed data from over 275 million users. According to official statements from Instructure, Compromised Information Likely includes names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and private messages sent within the platform.
Instructure has stated there is no evidence that passwords, financial information, or government IDs (like Social Security numbers) were accessed.
ShinyHunters has set a ransom deadline of May 12, 2026, threatening to leak the stolen data if their demands aren’t met.
Even though Instructure says passwords weren’t compromised, it’s a standard “better safe than sorry” move especially if you reuse that password elsewhere.
